credibility

– “Carta to Shift Focus: Prioritizing Trust by Exiting Secondaries Business”

Henry Ward Headshot 1
The big idea was to become the transfer agent, brokerage and clearinghouse for all private stock transactions in the world. While the move made Carta more valuable in the eyes of its venture backers — a company has to scale after all! In his post tonight, Ward downplayed the impacts of ending secondary trading on Carta, saying the revenue derived from the practice is minuscule compared with Carta’s other business offerings. Striking a humble tone, Ward wrote that “ALL of my ideas around liquidity — auctions, investor matching, secondary trading, open tender offers, have not worked. Many people think we are best poised to solve liquidity because we have cap table data.